Disorientation
by pathera
Summary: Pre-Series. After a hunt goes wrong Sam Winchester wakes up in the hospital, unable to remember anything, even his own name.
1. Prologue

A/N: Welcome to the prologue of _Disorientation_. This is a short fic, five chapters, and it's already written, so I'll be posting it over the course of the week, according to how much of my homework I'm _not _doing. It's set Pre-Series; Sam is around fourteen. There will be several OC's, who I hope will not come off as Mary or Gary Stu's. On the technical side: how much do I know about retrograde amnesia? Only what I remember from my Psych class. Please forgive any grammar or technical errors, and enjoy!

Disclaimer: I'm making tons of money from this. I own Supernatural. That's exactly why I am sitting in a college dorm pointedly _not _doing my English homework. Why bother with English when I own the sheer awesomeness of Supernatural?

Disorientation

_Prologue_

"Son?" The voice sounded like it was a million miles away. "Son, can you hear me?"

His mind felt so foggy. He tried to focus, but it was hard. He struggled to open his eyes, struggled to make the face in front of him come into focus. Looking at that face was like looking through water. He could make out eyes and lips and a dark hat perched atop the man's head, but they were all just blurry images without the sharp-definition he was used to.

"Try to stay awake, kid. Everything will be okay."

His eyelids fluttered; darkness was growing the corners of his blurry vision, lurking, waiting to sweep him under in a dark, heavy, unconscious world. He tried to get his lips to move, tried to say something, but his body wouldn't respond to his commands.

"Just try to stay awake a little bit longer." The voice said.

He tried to obey the plea, but the darkness that was swimming around him closed in, dragging him under.

He didn't even feel his eyes close.

* * *

He woke groggily to the sound of beeping. It registered in his mind that the sound was familiar, but he couldn't place it. When he opened his eyes to the white ceiling above his head and mint green curtains next to him, he was struck by a feeling that he should know exactly where he was. He was also struck by a feeling that he shouldn't like the place.

He moved a little, testing to see if his limbs worked. Assured that he could move he struggled to sit up and take in his surroundings.

Footsteps clicked against the tile floor, and two small, firm hands were on his chest, keeping him down. A pretty face, framed by a red bob, appeared in front of him. "It's okay, hon. Don't try to move. I'll have the doctor in just a sec."

_Doctor? _

The woman disappeared and he sank back against the bed, staring up at the ceiling. He tried to concentrate on what had happened and where he was, but the thoughts kept slipping away from him, disappearing like water through his fingers.

The red-haired woman appeared again, a man with an old-fashioned handlebar mustache next to her. "You're going to sit up now, okay?" He nodded, and she pressed a button. The bed he was laying on began to move, the end with his head moving vertically. She adjusted his pillows. "Better?"

He didn't do anything. He could see the whole room now, but he could also see the wires and tubes connected to his body, the beeping instruments surrounding his bed, and the bandages on his arms and on his chest.

Handlebar-Mustache gave what he supposed was a comforting smile. "It's good to see you awake, son. I'm Dr. Mutello. We need to ask you a few questions, okay?"

He nodded and ran his tongue across his dry lips, parting them. The red-haired woman—she was a nurse, he realized—lifted a glass of cold water to his lips. The liquid slid down his throat, a soothing balm to his parched mouth.

"Okay." Mutello said. "Can you tell us your name?"

He opened his mouth to answer and then snapped it closed. "I—." He knew this. He _knew _this. How could he forget his own name? What in the hell had happened? "I don't remember." He whispered, as though he couldn't bear to speak the words louder, for fear that if he did they would somehow change his entire life.

The doctor and the nurse exchanged glances. "Do you remember what happened to you?"

He felt something bubble up inside of him, an emotion that he couldn't put a name to until it burst within him. _Fear_. Mute, he shook his head, his eyes rolling wildly with barely constrained panic. They kept looking at him and he forced himself to unstick his lips. "I don't remember _anything_." He swallowed. "What happened? Why don't I remember?"

"We'll need to run some tests, son." Mutello said, shifting his weight to the side. "But I believe you may have a form of retrograde amnesia." At the blank look he received the doctor explained. "Retrograde amnesia is the inability to recall events from the past. You probably don't remember, but you received a head wound." His hand flew to his head where he found gauze and pain. "It's been stitched up. But a head wound can cause retrograde amnesia." Mutello shifted again. "We are going to let you rest today; tomorrow we'll run some tests, okay?"

He tried to nod and found that it sent a sharp, lancing pain through his head. He winced and stilled; the dull pain that he hadn't noticed upon awaking was growing more and more aggressive.

"Nurse Sommers will take care of you, okay?" He didn't nod and he didn't respond verbally either, just stared between the doctor and the nurse. "I'll see you tomorrow." He walked out of the room, leaving the nurse standing there, smiling in an attempt at comfort.

"Are you in pain?" She said.

He tried to nod again and found that he could only wince. She made a tsking sound and crossed to his bed, reaching into a drawer and pulling out a syringe. She injected the liquid into a tube and he watched it race towards his body with an almost morbid fascination. "That should kick in fast. It'll make you sleepy too, so be ready for it."

He opened his mouth to say something but found his eyes already fluttering. The nurse smiled at him and lowered him into a horizontal position again.

For the second time, he found the world pulled away as he stumbled into darkness.

* * *

The next time his eyes flickered open, he felt as though he'd been sleeping for a thousand years. _Rip Van Winkle_, he thought, _the man who slept for twenty years_. Immediately that thought was followed by another one. _I can remember Rip Van Winkle, but I can't remember my own goddamn name?_

"Oh good," a faintly familiar voice said, "you're awake." The nurse's face appeared over him, still framed by that fire-engine, straight-from-a-bottle red hair. "Would you like to sit up?"

He nodded, and she helped him into a sitting position again. "How do you feel?"

How did he feel? He was in a hospital, he couldn't remember his name, who he was, or what had happened to him, he didn't even know where he was, and he felt like he had been sleeping for ten years while the world just passed around him. He stared at the woman, and she chuckled.

"Stupid question. Sorry." She gave him a smile. "Are you in pain?"

He shook his head. His neck was a little stiff and he felt…_weird_, but he didn't hurt. The inevitable _yet _rolled through his mind before he could stop it.

"Do you remember anything?"

He shook his head again. She helped him take a sip of water and he reveled in the feeling. "What happened to me?" He said. The nurse paused in her motion of checking his chart and looked at him. Slowly, she put the chart back in its place and walked towards him. "We don't know, hon." She said, her words just as slow as her movements. "You were brought in the other night." She paused, licked her lips. "They found you on the side of the road, unconscious and barely breathing. One of the cops managed to get you awake there, but you passed out again. They brought you here." Her eyes flickered over him. "You've got a nasty bump on your head, scratches and bruises all over. A couple of broken ribs were the big problem; you're heavily medicated right now, so you probably can't feel them. You won't until you try to move."

He blinked at her, feeling the wild panic surge through him again. "Should you have told me that?"

She gave him a crooked smile. "Probably not. But you don't deserve to be kept in the dark." She tilted her head and surveyed him. "I never introduced myself, did I? Julia Sommers." She licked her lips. "We've been calling you John around here. You know, John Doe?"

_John_. The name danced through his mind, tantalizingly familiar. He knew _someone _named John. But it wasn't his name. It felt wrong as his name, too wrong to be acceptable. But, somewhere there was a John in his life.

"Not right, is it?" He shook his head and she frowned. "You need a name, for right now at least. We can't just call you son or hon or boy." She stared at him long and hard. "Is there any name that pops into your head?"

He closed his eyes, thinking, willing the memories to rise through the fog they were hidden within, but they stayed stubbornly lost, locked behind some door in his mind. Opening his eyes he shook his head.

She sighed, and then smiled slightly. It was, he thought, a bittersweet smile. "You know, I always said that if I had a son I would name him Alexander. Alex." She looked at him, and he thought he saw some ember of hope in her eyes. "How does that sound?"

_Alex_. It wasn't familiar, not even a little bit. It set off no bells in his head. It wasn't right…but it wasn't wrong. He could live with it.

Slowly, he nodded.

"Alex it is then." She smiled down at him. "It's nice to meet you, Alex."

* * *

Remember one of life's little lessons: _reviews are love_. Cheers!


	2. Chapter One

A/N: Alright, I'm bored, I'm not doing my homework, and I'm done classes for the day. So, here's the first chapter! I may as well contribute _something _to the world right now. Thanks to the people who reviewed the prologue, and to all the people who put this story/me on their alerts--I know you're lurking out there! So, about this chapter...what do I know about the foster system? Nothing at all, and I took some serious creative license with this whole situation. Sam is going to be known as Alex until he gets his memory back. I tried to keep most of the prose from his point of view and using pronouns, but every once in a while I actually call him Alex instead of just "he". Well, enjoy!

_Chapter One_

"You'll like it here, Alex. Ann and Drew are nice people, it's a good neighborhood, and they have a couple of other kids. You'll fit right in."

He threw the social worker—Katherine—an incredulous glance and returned to gazing out the window without responding. He heard her sigh, her fingers drumming on the steering wheel. "Alex, we've talked about this lack of communication. You can't just shut the rest of the world out."

In the month since the _Accident_, as they had taken to calling it—the _Accident_, as if that could explain that he had lost his identity, and whatever kind of life he had, so completely and without explanation—he had heard the same kind of lecture a hundred times. First from the hospital psychiatrist—oh how pissed off she had been when he refused to talk—then from Julia, the only person he ever voluntarily spoke to, and then from various people in the foster-system, including Katherine. He didn't want to talk; he wanted to _know _who he was and what had happened.

"Alex, are you listening to me?"

_No_. With a sigh he turned towards her, eyebrows lifted. She took her eyes off the road for a moment to shoot him a glance.

"There are people who want to help you, Alex, but you have to _talk _to us."

He looked at her for a moment and then turned back to staring out the window. The only person who could help him was himself. He just needed to _remember_.

He didn't want to think about what might happen if he _never _remembered.

The car slowed to a stop in front of a house. It was a fairly large house, white and clean and bright, with a spacious yard in front and a picturesque white-picket fence. For some reason that he couldn't explain and couldn't comprehend, the sight made him feel sick to his stomach.

"This is it."

With his stomach churning every step, he followed Katherine up to the door; his shoulders slumped like a man walking to the gallows, ready to be hanged.

Katherine rang the doorbell and within moments the door swung open. A little girl—no more than eight, dark-skinned, her hair in pigtails, with a bright pink dress and bare feet—stood in the doorway. She blinked at them and turned. "Mommy!"

A woman emerged from a corridor inside the house and smiled. "Katherine, you're here! Come in, come in. Lizzie, can you go and get your Dad for me?" The girl nodded and skipped away.

Katherine led the way into the house and he followed close behind her, suddenly unwilling to step away from her. She was the only familiar thing around him, and a sense of familiarity had become his lifeline over the past weeks. The woman took them into the living room and waved her hand at the couch and chairs. "Please, have a seat." Katherine perched on the edge of an armchair; he warily looked around and then took a place on the loveseat. The woman took a seat on the couch. "And you must be Alex," she said, looking at him.

He met her gaze for a moment and then broke away, looking around the room.

The little girl reappeared, a man trailing behind her. He smiled and took a seat next to the woman. "Nice to see you again, Katherine."

"A pleasure, Drew." The social worker said, with a tip of her head. "Alex, I would like you to meet Ann and Drew Wright."

He looked at them both, his insides squirming when they both returned his gaze. He quickly looked away.

"How old are you, Alex?" Ann said her voice soft. He shrugged.

"Fourteen or fifteen, we think." Katherine answered for him.

Suddenly the little girl crossed the room and stood in front of him, hands propped on her hips. "Who are you?"

He straightened, blinking. "I'm Alex." He said, his voice quiet. His voice was always quiet, these days.

"Are you going to live here too?"

"Lizzie…." Ann began.

He nodded. "Yes."

Her face broke out into a grin. "You can be my big brother too, then!" She said. "I already have two, but you can be another one!"

Alex stared at the girl for a long moment, and then smiled slightly. "Okay."

"Would you like to meet the others, Alex?" Ann stood, looking at him expectantly. He looked back at her and shrugged. Katherine glared at him and he realized that silence wouldn't help him any.

"Sure."

"I'll show you to your room, while we're at it. Do you have your stuff?"

"It's in the car." Katherine said. "I'll go get it."

"I'll help." Drew said, standing and shaking out his limbs. Katherine opened her mouth and then closed it again. Alex knew what she was going to say. _I don't need any help. _And she didn't. He knew very well that the only thing in the car was a small duffel bag, with a few spare clothes bought with a small allowance of cash. There were no personal possessions, nothing that he couldn't live without. He didn't own a thing in the world.

He followed Ann up the stairs, Lizzie by his side, holding his hand, chatting away. Over the girl's voice Ann spoke. "There's three others besides Lizzie. I'm afraid you'll have to share a room with Brandon. I hope that's okay."

At the top of the stairs Lizzie pulled on his hand, tugging him towards one of the rooms. "This is mine and Lydia's room." She said, pushing the door open. "Isn't it pretty?" The room was done in purples and blues. There were two twin beds inside, one decked out in purple frills that looked like they might eat whoever tried to sleep in the bed; the other was in dark blue. A girl around his age was sprawled on the second bed, a book in her hands, headphones in her ears. She looked up when they entered and tugged one of the headphones out of her ear.

"Are you the new kid?" She said, sitting up.

Lizzie bounced towards her. "Lydia, this is Alex and he's gonna be my new big brother! He can be yours too!"

Lydia's eyes swept him up and down. "Mhm. I think he's too young to be my big brother, Liz, but he's all yours."

Ann poked her head in. "Are you being nice, Lydia?" The girl looked at the woman with an innocent smile.

"Of course, Ann." She said, batting her eyes and simpering. Ann gave her a look with raised eyebrows and turned to Alex.

"Alex, I'll introduce you to the boys and show you your room now, if you'd like." He nodded his head in agreement and followed her. She paused outside of one of the doors and rapped her knuckles lightly against the wood. The door swung open seconds later.

"What do you need, Ann?"

Ann smiled a little at the teenager leaning against the doorframe. His blonde hair was artfully styled so that it looked as if he had just rolled out of bed, and his green eyes immediately fell upon Alex. "New kid, huh?"

"Cooper, I'd like you to meet Alex. He's going to be with us from now on."

Like all the rest, he once again fell scrutiny to the sweeping gaze over him, judging him. Looking into Cooper's green eyes though, he felt a shiver of familiarity. He knew someone with piercing green eyes like that. Someone important.

Cooper nodded and his gaze turned away, back to Ann. "Is that it?"

"Yes, Cooper. Thank you." The teenager retreated back into his room and the door began to close. "Dinner is at seven!"

"I know." He shot back, closing the door completely.

Ann smiled down at him and continued down the hallway. "And this is your room," she said, stopping in front of the next door. She knocked and the door opened.

Like all the rest, the final person, Brandon, looked completely different. His dark hair was spiked and his eyes—green as well, but not the same piercing green. This green was almost more brown, a muddy kind of color—were flat out hostile when they fell upon him.

He'd come under a lot of gazes in the past month alone—flat, confused, searching, bored, indifferent, intrigued, kind, friendly, worried, intent—but hostility was a new one.

And yet, there was something achingly familiar about looking into the eyes of someone who wanted to hurt him.

_Who in the hell had he been?_

"What?"

"Brandon, this Alex. He's your new roommate." Ann's voice seemed to have changed. It was louder, pushier, false where it had been genuine, as if she were trying to force something.

Those hostile eyes swept over him and Brandon snorted. "Looks like just another chump to me."

"Brandon," the name was said with a sigh, "we've had this conversation before."

"Whatever." The boy said, turning his back and stalking away from them.

There were bunk beds in the room and Ann walked over to them. "Alex, you get the top bunk. Is that okay?" He nodded.

"Got your stuff, Alex." Drew said behind them, carrying a small red duffle bag in one hand. He tossed it up onto the top bunk and stood next to his wife, looking down at his new ward.

Ann smiled. "We'll leave you to get settled in, okay? Dinner is at seven, and if you need _anything_ come let us know." She patted him on the shoulder and the two adults left the room.

Alex—that wasn't really his name, but it was better than nothing, wasn't it?—stood in the middle of the room that now half-belonged to him, feeling the heated gaze of his new roommate on his back, his stomach churning, his mind wheeling, feeling lost and alone, and remembering _absolutely nothing_.

* * *

He turned to the sound of knuckles cracking behind him. Brandon stood a short distance away, methodically cracking his knuckles, then cracking his neck. He shook his limbs out, as if preparing himself for a fight. The expression on his face was as easy to read as a sign stamped across his forehead screaming the words _DANGER, DANGER, TROUBLE. _

He took half-a-step backwards, putting himself in front of the door almost instinctively, ready to run.

"Let's lay some ground rules, shall we, new kid?" The teenager couldn't have been much older than him, but he had a good two inches and a good thirty pounds.

"First of all, this is _my _room. I tell you to get out, you get out. Got it?"

"Sure."

"Second, outside of this house, you don't look at me, you don't talk to me, you don't stand anywhere near me."

He nodded.

"Third of all…." He leaned over him, using his height to intimidate. "If you whisper a word of _anything _to the adults, I'll kill you."

He nodded again and Brandon backed up a step. "Good. Now get out."

He walked out of the room, the door slamming behind him, nearly catching him. He stood in the middle of the empty landing, surrounded by doors, with no clue of where to go or what to do.

"Don't let him bother you." He turned to the sound of Lydia's voice and found her standing in her doorway. "He's a jerk. Thinks he's all big and bad, but he's really nothin' but another reject." She looked at him and jerked her head towards her room. "You can come in here, if you want."

Hesitantly, he took a step in her direction. She smiled, showing her teeth. "I don't bite, new kid." She turned, her hair flying behind her, and she went into her room. He followed her. She flopped on her bed while he pulled a computer chair away from the desk. She propped her head in her hands and stared at him. Her eyes were dark and she gave him one of those searching gazes, as though she were trying to see into his soul.

"So, new kid, what's your story?"

"Huh?"

She snorted, half-grinning. "Your sob story, newbie. Every foster-kid's got one. How'd you get into the system? How'd you end up here?"

He fixed his gaze on the light blue carpet, not daring to look up at her.

"I don't know."

"What d'you mean, you don't know?"

He ran a hand through his hair, wincing as his fingertips skimmed the area of his head wound. It didn't hurt any more, but the thought of it alone made him wince. "I don't remember." He said softly.

"What?"

He looked up. "I don't remember. I don't remember anything." He took a deep breath. "They found me on the side of the road about a month ago. When I woke up I couldn't remember anything. I still can't remember anything."

"You have amnesia." Her voice was skeptical.

"Retrograde amnesia."

"Oh really?" Her voice had taken a hard edge to it. "So you couldn't remember anything? Okay, _Alex_."

"Alex isn't my name. The nurse gave it to me. It's better than nothing."

"You know, I was trying to be friendly. _Welcoming_." Lydia's smile had a nasty edge to it. "But I didn't know you were a compulsive liar." She stood up. "I think it's best if you leave my room now."

He closed his eyes. "I'm not lying."

"Get out."

He went, and the door slammed behind him.

Two doors slammed closed in front of him, and the other one had been closed from the start. He leaned against the wall and slowly slid down to the floor. He pulled his knees up to his chest and winced as his not-entirely healed ribs protested.

He leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes. There was a gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach, a kind of ache that wasn't entirely physical or mental. It was the faint, vague notion that he wanted to go _home_, but he had no clue where the hell home was. Didn't know if he even had a home. Certainly no one had showed up for him at the hospital, and the tests…he tried to forget what the tests had showed.

_Signs of abuse._

He heard the whispers from the nurses. He saw the look in Julia's eyes.

Maybe he didn't want to remember.

But he had to. Even if the memories were horrible, painful, dangerous, he had to get them back. Without his memories, without his identity, he was just an empty shell of a person. If he didn't remember he would be _Alex_, who no one loved, who no one cared about, who _couldn't remember_ forever.

He couldn't live with that.

* * *

A/N 2: I forgot to mention the abundunce of OC's that I'm introducing in this chapter. I hope that none of them come off as cliches, because that would _suck_. Let me know if they do, though, because I want to know what you think. For the sake of clarity I'll give a little run down of the main OC's. Ann and Drew are foster-parents. Lizzie is eight years old and the youngest. Lydia is fourteen, a little bit younger than Sam. Brandon is fifteen, a little bit older than Sam. Cooper, the oldest, is seventeen and about to turn eighteen, around the same age as Dean.

Reviews are love!


	3. Chapter Two

A/N: Hello again. Welcome to the second/third chapter of _Disorientation_. Thanks for all the great reviews! I tried to respond to all of them but I might have missed a couple...sorry if I did! Anyway, in this chapter you'll learn a little more about the OCs, see Sam/Alex settling in and maybe getting in trouble, and hopefully you'll like where I'm taking the story! Enjoy!

Disclaimer: Yes, in the twenty-four hours since I posted the first chapter I have: changed my gender, aged several years, changed my name to Eric Kripke, and now own Supernatural. NOT.

_Chapter Two_

He wasn't quite sure what he had done to piss off Fate, he thought as he ducked the swinging fist, but he sure as hell had pissed her off. She seemed intent on making life as miserable as possible, and she was doing a damn good job at it.

At home Ann tried to make him talk and Drew danced awkwardly around him, never knowing the right thing to say. Cooper completely ignored him, wrapped up in his high and mighty older world. Lydia threw him dark, angry looks, convinced that he was trying to make a fool of her. Brandon cracked his knuckles and towered over him, intent on making him miserable and paranoid. Only Lizzie, with all of her bright innocence and her smiling expressions, made life bearable.

And at school, by virtue of being the "new kid", by virtue of being the weird kid who didn't talk, who didn't make eye contact, who didn't have any friends and didn't try to make any, he fell right into the role of _victim_, of _target_, of _every bully's wet dream_.

He made it through the first couple of weeks without incident, bearing the sniggering and the laughing behind his back. He cringed when the saliva-soaked crumpled pieces of paper hit the back of his neck; he kept his head low when he walked through the halls. He stayed silent, somehow convinced that silence would save him.

But this physical violence, this new form of hostility, this cornering after school, this fist flying towards his face…this he couldn't take.

He ducked out of the way of the blow and his body reacted instantly, in ways that he didn't know were possible. He found himself fighting back, instinctively. Adrenaline pumped through his veins and he found himself actually _fighting back_. Not merely defending, but striking back offensively, his body moving fluidly and quickly.

He couldn't remember how or why, but fighting was something that he _knew_. Fighting, with the adrenaline pulsing and his fists flying, was so achingly familiar that he never wanted to stop.

Heavy hands fell upon his shoulders and he found himself pulled back. He fought the grip for an instant and then relaxed, looking up into green eyes. Cooper pulled him away and he blinked, looking at the carnage he had wrought. The main bully held his hand to his nose, blood dripping through his fingers. One of the others was out cold on the ground. The third was bent over, hands cupping a particular part of his anatomy protectively.

He let himself be led away. Cooper held onto his shoulder tightly, steering him down the street, to where a dark green, old car was parked. "Get in." The older teenager said, walking around to the other side.

He slid into the worn passenger seat and closed the door. The car's engine stuttered to a start and music pounded out of the speakers. For a moment he held his breath, waiting for the music to start. He felt expectant, and when some pop song blasted out he released the breath, feeling let down. He was waiting for something, and whatever it was didn't show up.

"You okay?"

"Yeah."

Those green eyes, cool and indifferent like always, flickered towards him, disbelieving. "You've got blood on your hands."

He looked down at his hands and sucked in a breath. His knuckles were raw and bloody; the sight of red against his skin sent his head reeling; not in an _I'm-going-to-faint _kind of way, but in a déjà vu kind of way. He'd seen blood on his own hands before, but he didn't know where or when or why.

"Doesn't hurt."

Cooper shook his head. "Ann's gonna kill you."

"It wasn't my fault."

Cooper gave him a half-grin. "Doesn't matter. She'll read you the riot act. It's always the same, about choices and walking away and violence isn't the answer." He gave a dry laugh.

Perhaps there was concern in his expression; Cooper looked at him and shook his head. "She's not going to kick you out, kid. Just lecture you." His fingers skidded over the steering wheel. "She's a good one, and fighting comes with the job."

He found himself being scrutinized by a gaze again. For the first time Cooper's gaze wasn't indifferent; now it was curious, searching. "Where'd you learn to fight like that?"

"I don't know."

"What do you mean?"

He was tired of trying to explain. "I can't remember anything."

"Like amnesia?"

"Exactly." There was defeat in his voice. He expected the car to slow, pull to the side, for Cooper to turn to him and tell him to _"get the hell out and have fun walking". _

"What happened?"

His head jerked up and he looked at the older teenager, whose eyes were fixed firmly on the road. "I don't know." He finally said. "I woke up in the hospital with a head wound, broken ribs, and a couple other injuries."

"And you don't remember anything?"

"I—." He paused. "Nothing clear. Nothing big. Some things are familiar but I can't place them."

"So Alex isn't your real name, then?"

"No."

Silence fell between them. He lowered his head again, not daring to meet the blonde's gaze. The car pulled into the driveway and the engine died away, the music falling with it.

"You're gonna have a black eye."

"Whatever."

Cooper cracked a smile and opened the door. "C'mon. Get washed up, and when Ann goes to lecture I'll back you up."

He looked into the blonde's green eyes and smiled.

"Thanks."

* * *

The hairs on the back of his neck prickled, and he could feel the gaze burning into the back of his head.

His head hurt, his eye was throbbing, his ribs—still not fully healed, and he was beginning to think that they would _never _stop hurting completely—hurt, and he was _not _in the mood to deal with his overly aggressive, tough-guy roommate.

At the same time, he was sick and tired of being intimidated and acting like a spineless worm whenever Brandon was around. He knew, now, that he could hold his own in a fight, and he was done letting everyone walk over him.

He swivled around in the computer chair and met Brandon's muddy gaze. "Can I help you?" He said, his voice steady.

Brandon sneered at him. "Think you're tough 'cause you won a fight, chump? Those clowns couldn't hurt a fly if they tried, and you wouldn't last a second in a real fight."

His temper, already high, was reaching its breaking point. He stood, pushing the chair back. "Do you have something worthwhile to say to me? Or are you just full of pointless, _pathetic _babble?"

Brandon was on his feet and the switchblade in his hand before Alex could blink. He slashed and Alex reacted automatically, his body taking over again. His mind took a backseat, watching in awe as his body slammed into the taller boy, knocking the wind out of him and wrestling the blade away. His hand corrected its grip on the switchblade automatically, and he held it like a professional, adrenaline pumping, facing the other boy, ready to defend, ready to strike back.

Brandon looked at the blade in his hand and rubbing his chest, trying to get his breath back.

"What the _hell _is your problem, dude?" Alex shouted.

"You think you can just waltz in here and take over." Brandon shouted back. "I'm not getting' replaced by some golden boy again—."

The door opened and Alex automatically retracted the blade, hiding the weapon in his pocket. "What's going on?" Ann asked, poking her head in and staring at the two boys. "I heard shouting." Brandon didn't look at her; just kept his gaze locked on Alex.

Alex looked at her and forced a smile. "Just a minor disagreement, Ann. Nothing to worry about. Brandon and I just worked it out." He looked at the other boy. "Didn't we, Brandon?"

Muddy brown-green eyes stared at him, and then Brandon nodded. "Yeah. We did. We're cool."

* * *

_The claws raked his side and he was thrown into a tree. It was dark and the flashlight tumbled from his fingers as he hit the rough bark. His breath rushed out of him and he slumped down, gasping for air, clutching his side. _

_He tried to see, tried to wrap his bloody fingers around the shotgun. He stood, wincing. His heart was racing. _

_He heard shouting, and then he heard a scream, followed by the sound of gunshots cracking through the air. _

_He raced towards the sound. _

_"De—!" _

* * *

"Dude, wake _up!_"

The voice shouted in his ear and the hand shoved him _hard_. He bolted upright, his covers flying everywhere. His entire body was shaking and he realized that his clothes were damp from sweat. Through the darkness he could make out Brandon's face next to him.

The door opened and the light flickered on.

"_What _is going on in here?"

Ann stood in the doorway, shrouded in a night-gown. Drew stood behind her, his hair sticking up in all directions, his eyes blinking as he tried to keep them open.

In the light, he could see that Brandon's skin was paler than normal, as if all the blood had drained from his face.

"He was having a nightmare." The boy said, climbing down the ladder and retreating to his bed. "I woke him up."

Ann's face was the picture of motherly concern. "Alex, are you alright?"

He sucked in a few shaky breaths, trying to slow his heart-rate before his heart beat right out of his chest. He managed to nod. "I'm fine."

"Are you sure?"

_No. _

"Yeah."

"Alright." She said. The look on her face said that she didn't believe him, but she stepped back. "Try to go back to sleep." Drew was already gone through the door, heading back to their room. "Goodnight boys." The light flipped off and they plunged into darkness.

His eyes were wide as he fell backwards, head flopping against the pillow.

"Dude, what the hell were you dreaming about?"

Brandon's voice didn't have the hostile tone that he had become accustomed to. It sounded almost…friendly. Curious, maybe a little bit worried, definitely with an edge of fear. But not hostile.

"I don't know." He swallowed. "I can't remember." He lied.

Brandon made a noise beneath him and there was silence.

In the darkness, he slid his hand over his side, feeling the raised scar there. Five ragged lines, like claw marks in his skin.

His fingers skimmed over the still-red marks and he shuddered, suddenly feeling cold.

* * *

"You weren't lying, were you?"

Alex looked up from the math text book spread out before him and saw Lydia standing in the doorway, her hands behind her back.

"What?"

"You weren't lying to me, when you said that you had amnesia."

There was a smart-ass comment ready on his lips, a _How'd you figure that one out_?_, _but he looked at her and decided that it wasn't worth fighting over. "No, I wasn't."

She approached, pulling a chair away from the table and sitting across from him. "I'm sorry."

"It's fine."

She stared at him for a long moment, while he avoided eye contact. Then her gaze went to his textbook. "Do you get that stuff?"

He met her gaze. "Yeah."

She smiled hesitantly. "Do you think you could help me?"

He gave her the most genuine smile that had crossed his expression since he had been there, his face softening, his eyes taking on a little more life. "Sure."

They smiled at each other and then bent over the textbook.

* * *

"But Mommy, I don't _want _to!" Lizzie whined. Lydia shook her head and turned back to Alex, ignoring the sound of the argument which consisted mostly of _You have to _and _But I don't want to!._ She looked at him and frowned.

"What?" She asked. He turned his gaze away from Lizzie and Ann and looked at her.

"What what?" He said, tilting his head.

"What's that look on your face for?"

"What look?"

"The confused, you-want-to-know something look."

He snorted. "I was just curious about something."

"Curiosity killed the cat." He made a face at her and she grinned back. "What are you curious about?"

He shifted a little. "Lizzie is the only one who calls Ann 'mom'. But Cooper has been here for years and so have you."

Lydia's hands skimmed over the surface of the table and she wouldn't meet his eyes. "Lizzie calls Ann her mom because Ann _is _her mom. Ann and Drew adopted Lizzie when she was a baby; Lizzie's never known anyone else and they raised her. It doesn't matter if she isn't their real child, because they love her and she loves them and they're her parents." She paused for a moment. "Cooper and I remember our real parents. And maybe they aren't happy memories, but so what? We've been through home after home, and just because this one is better, just because this one is pretty permanent, just because they've offered to adopt us time after time, doesn't mean that we can just…_forget_. I like Ann and Drew a lot, and they've been good. But they're not my parents."

He looked down, watching her hands. "I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"For asking."

He could hear the smile in her voice. "Don't be, new kid. The cat never could resist curiosity."

* * *

A/N 2: You like? Still no mention of Dean or John, so sorry to those who were hoping. I'll probably end up posting the third chapter later tonight, since it's raining and I have nothing better to do. Remember to review! Or lurk, if you'd prefer.


	4. Chapter Three

A/N: I told you earlier that I'd post this chapter tonight, and here it is! There is are a few _slight _time jumps in this, just for the sake of moving forward. There is only one more chapter after this--unless I get requests for an epilogue--so things are starting to build up. This is also _definitely _the longest chapter, so enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't even own the DVDs, and you expect me to own the show?

_Chapter Three_

_The gunshots ripped apart the night. He could hear people screaming, a woman, a man; he could hear people yelling, not with the same panic as the screams but with authority. _

_His side hurt. The blood was warm and silky smooth on his skin. _

_He ran. _

_He could hear it in the darkness behind him, hear its deep, rumbling growl, hear the raspy breaths it took, could hear the sharp crack of sticks as it moved. His head was spinning. _

_He was going to die. _

_It launched out of the darkness and he tumbled down, feeling the claws scrape against him, feeling its heavy weight over him, feeling its hot breath on him. The shotgun tumbled from his hands, too far away to reach._

_The knowledge roared over him, shaking him. He was going to __**die**__. _

_He screamed._

* * *

"Alex. Alex!"

He bolted upright, for what seemed like the hundredth time, drenched and shaking and breathing fast, his heart racing. He looked at Brandon and groaned.

"_Damn _it." He muttered, trying to straighten his covers. "Sorry."

"Dude, what the _hell _are you dreaming about?" Brandon said, not climbing back down the way he normally did. He perched on the rungs, his expression demanding an explanation.

Somehow, at some point during the month-and-a-half he had been there, Brandon's hostility towards him had completely died. After their fight—the one and only physical fight between them—there had been respect in Brandon's eyes, respect and something akin to acceptance of his presence. After that they had tolerated each other, coexisted in a much friendlier way, and their relationship had slowly begun to warm, into a kind of friendship. And now the other boy was sitting there, staring at him with some measure of concern in his eyes.

"Nothing." He muttered, not willing to discuss his nightmares—_weird _nightmares, that felt too real and that he couldn't understand at all—with his roommate, especially not in the middle of the night.

"_Bullshit_."

He blinked.

"You do not scream and thrash like that for nothing, Alex."

"I—." He looked at the other boy. "It's just a stupid nightmare, Brandon. Nothing to worry about."

Brandon gave him a disbelieving look. "Whatever," he muttered, as he climbed back down the ladder.

Alex pulled his covers up and stared at the ceiling, the dream playing over and over in his mind. The fear from the dream was still present, making his throat tighten up. His mind raced with questions, of who he was and why he was having nightmares and what it all meant.

_Curiosity killed the cat_, he heard in his mind, in Lydia's sing-song voice.

But he _had _to know.

* * *

"Ugh, I give up!" Lydia screeched, throwing her text book across the room, narrowly missing Alex as he walked in. He took a step back and stared.

"Did you just try to kill me with a text book?" He asked, retrieving the much abused book.

"Shut up, Alex." She said, burying her head into her pillow. "I'm useless at Latin." She felt her bed sink a little as he sat on the end of it, and then she heard his voice.

"Arms, and the man I sing, who, forced by fate, and haughty Juno's unrelenting hate, expelled and exiled, left the Trojan shore." She lifted her head, staring at him.

"What did you just say?" He was staring at the book with an incredulous expression. His eyes flickered to her for a moment and he cleared his throat.

"Long labors, both by sea and land, he bore, and in the doubtful war, before he won the Latian realm, and built the destined town; his banished gods restored to rites divine, and settled sure succession in his line--."

"Are you _reading _that?" She asked, sitting up all the way. She looked at the text book in his hands and saw it open to the beginning of _The Aeneid_. It was a long block of text, entirely in Latin. She stared at him and he stared at the book. "You," she said slowly, "can _read _Latin."

He looked at her. "I can read Latin." He closed the book. "Why can I read Latin?"

She shook her head. "I don't know."

* * *

The days grew longer and warmer and the two months since the Accident became three, then four. It seemed to him that he woke up one day and was, without question, Alex Carson.

Slowly, the world around him transformed, and he learned about the people he lived with.

Ann and Drew hadn't just begun fostering out of the goodness of their hearts. Ann had been a foster-kid herself, in the system until she was eighteen. She'd worked her way up through life, married, and decided that she couldn't let other children be shifted from home to home the way she had.

Lizzie was the easiest to understand. Abandoned at a hospital after her birth, adopted a few weeks later, she had grown up as Lizzie Wright and she had never been anyone else. She was a bright, smart girl, everything that he imagined a little sister would be, complete with her cute moments and her irritating moments.

Cooper was something of an enigma. He gathered, from his conversations with Lydia and with Cooper himself, that he'd been in the system since he was seven, shifted from home to home. He'd been a problem child, always in trouble with school, with the law. Ann and Drew had been his last chance. Now he was older, mature, almost eighteen, almost _free_. He played the older brother role perfectly; older and aloof and wrapped up in his higher world, but always there when he was needed, always keeping an eye on the people he chose as his family. He was settled, well-adjusted, and everyone pretended not to notice that he would sometimes look at a car and be transported into another world.

Brandon was the version of Cooper at a younger age. Only in the system for a few years, taken from a hard life, constantly in trouble. But Alex had sat in the darkness and listened to the older boy toss and turn beneath him, calling out in his nightmares—_Stop! Please, don't…­­please don't, please—_and he understood the hostility that Brandon surrounded himself in a little better.

And Lydia…Lydia was the best friend he had ever had. That he could remember, anyway. He held her hand on the anniversary of her mother's murder, and wiped the tears away.

When he realized that it that it was June, that he had been there almost six months, he stopped dead.

He was happy. He had a family—sort-of—and he had friends--after the incident with the bullies, _everyone_ wanted to be his friend; he did well in school and he lived in a nice neighborhood. His wounds had healed and he wasn't silent anymore. He wasn't exactly _loud_, but he laughed and he spoke and he was _normal_. Even if he couldn't remember anything before six months ago.

He was happy.

And, at the exact same time that he was blissfully happy, he wasn't.

He was happy on the surface; hell, he was happy beneath the surface too. But he still couldn't remember anything about who he was, couldn't remember his own name. No matter how much he had become Alex Carson, he knew, deep down, that he _wasn't_. He still woke at night, sweating, screaming, shaken awake by Brandon, sometimes drawing Ann or Drew to the room, sometimes even waking Lydia or Cooper—but not Lizzie, who could sleep through _anything. _Rather than getting better, his nightmares were getting worse. They were longer, more detailed, just as frightening, just as painful, and he couldn't shake the feeling that they were real, even though his logical mind told him that they were impossible.

He was happy, or at least, he would have been, if he weren't haunted by the feeling, deep within himself, that something vital was missing.

* * *

"You lied to me."

"What?" His head jerked up and he looked at Lydia. She stood over him, hands on her hips. His arms crossed over his chest.

"You told me that you weren't having nightmares anymore." She scowled. "You lied."

He looked at her and contemplating denying it. The steely look in her eyes "You lied to me."

"What?" His head jerked up and he looked at Lydia. She stood over him, hands on her hips. His arms crossed over his chest.

"You told me that you weren't having nightmares anymore." She scowled. "You lied."

He looked at her and contemplating denying it. The steely look in her eyes told him that she already knew the truth, and that she would rip him apart if he lied to her. Instead he looked down. "Clearly Brandon can't keep his mouth shut."

"Brandon knows better than to lie to me." She shot back, her voice hard. "Why did you lie to me?"

"Because it's not important!" He kept his gaze on the ground. "They're just stupid nightmares and they don't mean anything."

"That's it!" She shouted, glaring at him. His head jerked up. "Alex Carson, you are going to tell me _right now _what those dreams are about, or I swear…."

"You'll do what?" He said, struggling to keep his voice even. "You'll do what, Lyd? Tell Ann? Tell Drew? You can't do anything."

Her eyes, dark and deep, narrowed. "I don't have to be your friend, Alex. And if you're going to be a lying bastard I won't be your friend much longer."

He stared at her, torn. There was the little voice in the back of his mind that told him it was an empty threat; that she wasn't heartless and she wouldn't do that to him, that she was just manipulating him. But his heart thudded at the thought of losing her friendship and his mouth opened against his will.

"I-I'm in a forest. It's always night, always so dark that I can barely see anything." His throat was dry and he tried to swallow. "I can hear gunshots and people screaming, other people yelling. Sometimes I'm thrown against a tree, other times I'm running. And there's _something _after me. Something in the forest. Sometimes it's just chasing me, sometimes it attacks. And I never see it, but I always _know _that I'm going to die."

He fell silent and he avoided looking at her. Out of habit his hand rubbed the part of the torso with his scar, the one that so perfectly matched the wounds from the dream. He shook his head, laughing bitterly. "See, Lydia? It's just a stupid dream that doesn't mean anything."

She was silent. Too quiet. He looked up and found himself staring at empty air. "Lydia?"

He looked around, but she was gone. He rubbed his head with his hand, closing his eyes. "Great. She thinks I'm crazy."

"I will if you keep talking to yourself like that." His eyes popped open and he found Lydia in front of him again, a book clutched in her hands. She sat on the couch next to him and he read the spine of the book. _Dream Dictionary. _

He groaned. "Lydia…."

"Shut up, Alex." She said, flipping through the book. She flipped through the book for several minutes, while he sat there watching her. Everyone once in a while she would make a little noise or fold down the corner of a page. Finally she stopped and looked at him. "All right."

"Lydia, what are you doing?"

"Analyzing your dream. Dreams aren't usually meant to be taken literally, Alex. They usually mean something more symbolic. Everything that you just told me is a symbol for something bigger."

He made a noise in the back of his throat but let her continue.

"Okay, you said that you're always in a forest, right?" She flipped the book open to one of the dog-eared pages. "Being lost in a forest means that you're searching through yourself, trying to gain a better understanding of who you are." She gave him a pointed look. "Sound accurate enough?"

He glared back.

"It's always dark, right? Darkness can represent feelings of insecurity or desperation. Night symbolizes death, rebirth, and new beginnings. Dreaming about yourself dying can symbolize change. It can mean leaving the past behind and moving on. Screaming is a representation of repressed emotions, usually anger or fear. Pain, in a dream, means that you're being _too hard _on yourself with situations that are out of your control." She licked her lips. "Dreams about being chased are some of the most common dreams. They usually mean that you're avoiding something, running away from something." She looked at him. "Any of that sound spot-on, Alex?"

He scowled. "Thank you for psychoanalyzing me, _Lydia_." He said, in a cold voice.

"Get over yourself, Alex." She said, tossing the book onto the coffee table in front of her. "These dreams are still about your memory. They're a manifestation of your feelings about not being able to remember, and they're also telling you that you need to let the past go."

His entire body was stiff. He didn't realize that his hands were curled into fists until he looked down; he forced himself to uncurl them.

"You really should look into being a psychologist, Lydia. You're good at telling other people how they feel." His voice, which had already been cold, turned down a few more notches. He felt the words like ice in his mouth, harsh and biting.

For the first time, Lydia looked at him with alarm.

"Alex—."

"I mean, it's so easy for you to sit there and tell other people what to do and how to feel, that you must be perfect. Maybe I should just move on, just let go of the fact that I don't remember anything about who I was ten months ago. I mean, I have a charmed life now, so who cares what happened before? Who cares that I can't remember my own name?" He took a breath, the words spilling faster and faster from his mouth. He was regretting them as soon as he said them, but he couldn't stop himself. "Of course, maybe you should also take a long hard look in the mirror, Lydia. Maybe you should just _get over _being a foster-kid. Just get over what you saw. Just _move on_." Her eyes flashed, hurt and angry. He stood up, his body so tense that he was shaking.

"Get over yourself, Lydia." He shot, and then turned, stalking away.

Lydia sat on the couch, staring at his retreating back, wondering whether or not the person who had just cut her to pieces was Alex Carson or the person he had been before.

* * *

He was in a bad mood.

It was the kind of bad mood that seemed to take an almost physical form, like a thundercloud over his head. His hair was in a state of disarray and there were dark circles under his eyes, courtesy of another sleepless night. It was hot and there was a trail of sweat trickling down his back. He had a hostile kind of look in his eyes, the kind of look that made people change their mind about talking to him. He and Lydia still weren't talking after their argument and he'd already snapped at Lizzie, sending her running into her mother's arms. He'd gotten a disapproving look from Cooper, a few disappointed/concerned words from Ann, and Brandon did not know when to _shut up_.

"No, Brandon, I'm not going swimming with you." He snapped, walking away from the other boy.

"Alex, do you realize how freakin' hot it is?"

"Yes." He said, wiping sweat from the back of his neck and grimacing.

"Then go swimming with me."

"No." He said, through ground teeth. Swimming would have felt good, he thought, but he didn't want to. He didn't want to do _anything_.

"What the hell is wrong with you today?"

He threw his hands up in the air, whirling around to face the slightly taller boy. "Would you just leave me alone?" He shouted, fed up. Brandon took a step back.

"Fine." He said. His expression completely closed off and Alex could read nothing in his eyes. Brandon turned and walked away.

He stood and watched his roommate trail away, realizing that he'd alienated yet another person.

* * *

"How long is this fight of yours going to last?"

He raised his head wearily and looked to where Cooper was standing in the doorway. "What fight?" He said, in a tired, dead voice.

"This fight you've got going on with eighty percent of the house." The teenager said, walking into the room and leaning on the ladder.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Cooper gave him a half-amused look, raising his eyebrows. "Really? You and Lydia aren't talking, you and Brandon aren't talking, and Lizzie is giving you the silent treatment, even though you don't realize it. Even Ann's pissed off at you."

He wanted to pull his covers over his head and drift away. His eyelids were heavy and he was so _tired_. But he knew that if he closed his eyes he would just see more of the same images, the darkness and the pain and the screaming and the gunshots. He struggled to focus.

"Lydia needs to stop trying to psychoanalyze me; Brandon needs to realize that when people don't want to swim they don't want to swim—."

"And Lizzie?" Cooper said, interrupting him. "What on earth did an eight year old do to you, Alex?"

He winced and then sighed. "Look, Cooper, I know I've been a jerk lately. I just…." He fell silent.

"Look, kid, we've all got things that hang over our head sometimes. We've all got problems. But you can't alienate everyone who wants to help you."

He found himself staring into green eyes—_so freakin' familiar and why couldn't he just remember?—_and he felt a sharp ache inside, that ache that he was too familiar with by now.

"Trust me on this one. Shutting everyone else out doesn't help. Whether or not you can remember what happened, you've still got to deal."

* * *

"Lydia, can I talk to you?"

She looked at him, her lips pursed, her eyes narrowed. Finally, after staring him down, she nodded.

He took a deep breath. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said the things that I said, and I didn't mean them. I was just angry. And not even entirely at you. I was just angry at everything, and I took it out on you." He scrunched up his face. "And on Brandon. And on Lizzie." He groaned. "I'm an idiot."

"Agreed." Lydia grinned at him. "I'm sorry too. I was just trying to help, but I overstepped my boundaries." She held out a hand. "Friends?"

He took her hand. "Only if you promise not to psychoanalyze me anymore."

* * *

Alex looked from the tiny, blue plastic chair that he was squeezed into to the bright pink plastic cup he held in his hands. He blinked, in some kind of stunned disbelief, and looked around the white table he was "sitting" at. There was a white fluffy bear across from him, a bright purple bunny next to him, and a ragged brown dog on his other side.

He heard a muffled, choking laugh behind him and closed his eyes.

_Dear God, please don't let them take pictures. _

"More tea, Alex?" His "hostess" asked. He opened his eyes and looked at Lizzie, trying to muster a smile for the girl.

"Thank you, Lizzie." He managed to choke out.

She smiled sweetly—_demon child_, he thought, _absolute evil_—and pretended to pour him tea. "This is such a nice tea party, don't you think?"

"It's lovely." He said. "How long is it going to last?"

She tilted her head to the side and looked at him. "I don't know. I am having so much fun. I can never get anyone to play tea party with me!" She went around the table, "pouring" tea for her other "guests".

He heard footsteps behind him and the click of a camera.

"Lydia, I swear…."

He turned and Lydia grinned, snapping a picture of his face. "You shouldn't have been mean to her, Alex. This is how she always punishes people who are mean to her."

He groaned.

"I'm going to burn that camera."

"Alex! You're not drinking your tea!"

He turned his face towards the cloudless blue sky. _Lord save me._

* * *

_Its weight bore down on him, pinning him to the ground. He was immobile, frozen by the tear claws, by the fear that seized him, by the desperate knowledge that he was going to die. _

_Its head moved and he could dimly make out the shape of its fangs. _

_Its eyes were red, glowing like the fires of hell in the darkness. _

_He screamed._

_"Get the hell away from my brother!" The voice shouted, and he had never been more grateful to hear that voice before in his life. _

_The gunshot was deafening. The creature on his chest evaporated, into nothingness. _

_He climbed to his feet, shaking. There were footsteps and a figure raced towards him. _

_"You okay?" _

_He managed to nod, not trusting his voice to speak. _

_Something moved, leaping through the darkness, leaping straight for the man's throat. _

_"Watch out!" _

_The man whirled, shotgun in hand, but the creature was already on top of him. His eyes widened in horror. _

_And then he fell, claws slicing into his back on the way down. He reached out a hand, reaching for the man who had saved him. _

_"De—." _

* * *

The name slipped away from him as they shook him to consciousness. And when his eyes snapped open, when he stared at the ceiling, it was completely gone.

* * *

Julia Sommers looked at the man standing across from her. He was cute--hell, who was she kidding? He was _hot--_and she _was _single, after all. He was charming and smooth, with that flirtatious grin on his lips as he spoke. But the moment he handed her the picture, the moment she looked down at it, his expression changed.

"You have seen him, haven't you?" He said, leaning forward. The flirtatious, suave charm disappeared, replaced by intensity and hope that lit his eyes.

She looked at the photograph in her hands and placed it on the counter in front of him. "I can't help you, sir."

"You have seen him. You know him, don't you? Miss--," his eyes flickered to her name tag and back up, "Julia, _please_. This is my brother, and you've seen him before. Please, tell me what you know."

She hesitated, looking at the photograph again.

His eyes bore into hers. "_Please_."

She licked her lips. "When he was here...," she took a breath. "When he was here, we called him Alex."

* * *

A/N 2: Happy? Satisfied? Intrigued? Leave your thoughts, comments, and questions at the beep (otherwise known as that little blue button). The last and final chapter is going up tomorrow, so be ready! Another comment: the Latin translation that Alex reads is the first part of _The Aeneid, _which I definitely did _not _write.


	5. Chapter Four

A/N: Hello all! Thanks for the awesome responses, and I'll get around to responding to all reviews later. This is--maybe--the last chapter, and hope you all like the conclusion! I'll have a little bit of a longer author's note at the end, so, for now, enjoy!

Disclaimer: I knew I forgot something...it's still not mine.

_Chapter Four_

"Do you have any twos?"

"Go fish." Both girls chorused, giggling like maniacs. He narrowed his eyes, glaring.

"You two are in league with each other, aren't you?" He accused, reaching for the pile of cards. The two grinned at him and he shook his head. "I should never play cards with you, should I?"

"No, you shouldn't." Brandon said, poking his head out from the kitchen. "They both cheat."

The doorbell rang cheerfully throughout the house and he stretched. "Not it."

"Not it," both girls said immediately. Brandon poked his head out again and glared.

"Cheaters." He said.

Ann passed by the living room and smiled. "_I'll _get it."

"Got any fours?" Lydia asked.

"Nope."

"Go fish."

He could hear Ann faintly from where he was. "Hello?" She asked. The doorway was out of view, so he couldn't see who was there.

Lizzie looked right at him and grinned like an impish pixie. "Got any sixes?" He scowled at the little girl and shoveled over his six.

"Cheater." He muttered, in the exact same accusing tone as Brandon.

"_Hello. I'm not sure if I have the right house—._" The voice floated in from the door and the moment he heard it he froze. He stiffened, his heart pounding.

_Dean. _

"Alex?" Lydia said slowly. He stared into the air behind her, his mind racing.

_Dean. _

_Dean Winchester. John Winchester. __**Sam **__Winchester. _

"Dean." He whispered. He stood, the cards falling from his hand and fluttering to the floor. "Dean." He said, a little louder.

"Alex?"

He walked towards the door.

_"—but this is the address that I found—." _

_**Dean. **_

It was him. He knew it was. He knew, he _remembered. _

The smile broke over his face and he was running for the door. Running, faster than he had ever ran before.

"Dean!" He shouted, as he rounded the corner and saw Ann standing in the doorway, talking to the man with short brown hair and green eyes, the man with a leather jacket and an amulet on a cord around his neck.

Dean's head jerked and their eyes locked and the grin that spread over the man's face could have lit the world.

He ran into his brother's arms, and those familiar arms pulled him tight, into an embrace that he had forgotten. He held on like a life-line, burying his head into that familiar leather-jacket and shaking.

"_Sammy_." The name—_his _name—swept over him and everything that was still lost returned in a tidal wave of memory. His throat closed and he tried to hold back tears. He pulled back a little, looking up into his brother's green eyes, grinning when he realized that his brother was trying just as hard to not cry as he was.

"Alex?"

He turned at the sound of the name that had become his. Ann stood in the doorway, her head tilted, her eyes questioning. Lydia stood farther back down the hallway, her hands over he mouth, realizing, somehow, what was happening.

"Alex?" Dean said.

"Um…." He stood between his brother and his foster-mother, straddling the line between Alex Carson and Sam Winchester. "Dean, this is Ann. Ann, this is my brother, Dean." Ann's forehead furrowed and she opened the door a little wide.

"Maybe we'd better take a seat."

* * *

He sat in the living room—where the cards from the abandoned game of _Go Fish _still lay on the ground, where he had been Alex Carson only minutes before—next to his brother, while the family gathered across from them. While they waited, he and Dean had a hushed conversation.

"Where's Dad?"

"Sleeping." Dean whispered back. "I didn't tell him that I was going to check this house out." He let out a long breath. "Sammy, you've got no idea how many places we've been, looking for you. Once we figured out what hospital you'd been taken to we figured out what happened, talked to that red-haired nurse at the hospital--man, she was hot--."

"_Dean!_"

Dean grinned at him and continued on like nothing had happened. "She told us you'd been put into foster-care and we started looking there. It took a hell of a lot to even get anyone to _talk _to us, a lot more to figure out who handled your case, where you were taken, where you were put. We were starting to think…."

He winced. "I couldn't remember _anything_, Dean. They called it retrograde amnesia. I couldn't even remember my own name. I've been Alex Carson for the past six months."

"I know. Couldn't come up with a better name than that, Sammy?"

He rolled his eyes and elbowed his brother, grinning broadly. Dean grinned back, the same, devilish smile that he could _remember _so well.

"I've been missing for six months and the only thing you can do is make fun of me?"

Dean ruffled his hair.

Someone cleared their throat and they both looked up. Cooper, Brandon, Lydia, and Lizzie sat on the couch, Lizzie on Cooper's lap. Lydia was carefully avoiding his gaze, keeping her eyes fixed on the fabric of the couch. Ann sat in one of the armchairs, Drew standing next to her, one hand on her shoulder.

There was an awkward silence, and Alex—_Sam—_whoever he was, could feel every eye upon him. "Dean, this is Ann and Drew. They took me in."

Dean nodded his head to the two adults. "Thank you." He said, his voice soft.

"And this is Lydia, Brandon, Cooper, and Lizzie." Dean nodded to them as well. "This is Dean, my brother."

"Alex, do you have your memory back?" Drew asked. He nodded.

"Completely." He looked at his brother and then to his adopted-family. "My name isn't Alex Carson. It's Sam Winchester."

"Do you remember the Accident?"

He hesitated. "Kind of," he said, struggling not to look at his brother. He knew from the look on Ann's face that she was remembering what she had been told when she first took him in; the markings on his body, the scars, the wounds, the old injuries, the signs—too many to explain away as sheer clumsiness—that pointed to child abuse. He had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, a feeling that things weren't going to end well.

"What happened?"

"We were hunting…."

"Hunting what?" Ann said, her voice clipped. _Black Dogs, _his mind said, supplying him with memories, _an entire pack of Black Dogs._

"Deer." Dean answered. Ann shot him a sharp look which he returned mildly.

"It was me and Dean and our Dad. We go hunting a lot." _Understatement of the year_, he thought. "And we were in the woods. It was dark—," he saw Lydia's head snap up, felt her eyes on him, "—and we were attacked."

"By what?" Ann said, eyebrows raised.

"A bear." Dean said, jumping in to save him. "A grizzly." He met the woman's gaze squarely. "Sammy was getting firewood and he was the first one attacked." He looked at his brother. "He's lucky to be alive."

Sam looked down.

_The shotgun, filled with rock-salt pellets, was heavy in his hand; his other hand clutched the flashlight the way a drowning man would cling to a piece of driftwood. He aimed carefully into the dark, not letting his guard down. He couldn't hear anything, nothing except the oppressive silence. He moved through the darkness. Dad and Dean were both going to kill him later for getting seperated, if he wasn't already dead. The thought wasn't comforting. _

_It roared out of the darkness, claws slashing. He fell, and the claws ripped into his side. He fired off a blast, hitting his mark, and he lurched for his feet. "SAM!" He heard. He opened his mouth to shout back, and the claws ripped into him again. He was thrown against the tree; his bloody fingers tried to keep their grip on the shotgun. He could hear the shouting and screaming and the sound of gunshots._

Dean's hand touched his shoulder and he shook his head. He had dreamed about the scene enough times for it to be engraved in his memory; he didn't need to relive it while waking too.

"It tore our camp to shreds, and beat us up pretty bad. Dad and I were both unconscious."

"Then how, exactly, are you still alive?"

Dean didn't flinch from the woman's cold tone. "We were fortunate, m'am. Another hunter was in the area and he heard the yelling. He saved our lives." Sam looked sideways at his brother, and Dean looked at him out of the corner of his eye. He could barely see the shape that his brother's lips made, but then he understood. _Bobby_.

_"Dad, are you sure we can handle this on our own?" He asked. His brother scoffed and rolled his eyes, but his father turned. _

_"I'm sure, Sam." He said. The worried look remained in Sam's eyes, and John's face softened. "How 'bout this, Sam? I'll give Bobby a call. He can meet us there later, just in case. Okay?" _

_He nodded._

"And what about Alex—Sam?"

"I don't know how Sam got to where he was found. I guess he hit his head and wandered away."

_He woke and was afraid. It was dark and he was in pain, and the fear took him over completely. He staggered to his feet. It was dark and he couldn't see anything; his breath came faster and faster and every breath hurt. He could smell blood, he heard shouting and gunshots and he covered his ears. He turned in the opposite direction and he ran. He ran, blindly, painfully, spurned on by fear. Blood trickled down the back of his neck. There was a break in the trees--the road--and he tumbled to the ground._

"Shock can do that to a person. I guess he made it to the road. My dad and I were taken to a different hospital than Sam." Ann made a disbelieving noise in the back of her throat but let the subject drop.

"You mentioned your father, where is he?"

"He's talking to some people, trying to find Sam. We split up to cover more ground, figured that we'd have a better chance of finding him if we could be in more than one place. We were in the hospital for about a month-and-a-half, and no one could tell us what happened to Sam. The first thing we did, once they would let us--" Sam read, in those few words, _once they would let us_, just how badly his brother and father had been hurt, bad enough that they were out of commission for longer than just a few weeks. "--was start trying to find him."

Ann's eyes were sharp and narrowed. "How old are you, _Dean_?"

Sam realized that his brother and his foster-mother were locked in an epic battle, and he realized exactly what they were fighting for: _him. _

"Eighteen, m'am."

Dean was resorting to extreme politeness. It wasn't a maneuver he made often; he usually relied on his charm or resorted to underhanded tactics. But here he was trying to convince Ann that he was the epitome of politeness, just an average, good-natured, All-American boy.

It wasn't going to work.

"If you wouldn't mind, m'am, I'd like to take Sammy home now."

Sam winced, knowing exactly what was coming.

Ann smiled, suddenly, but it wasn't a friendly smile. It was a hostile, frozen smile, made of ice. "I'm sorry, Dean, but I can't let you just take him. There's all kinds of paper-work your father will have to fill out in order for him to be released into your custody, and I can't rightfully let him go off with anyone other than his _rightful _guardian."

Dean tensed a little, but he nodded. He kept his smile etched onto his face, even if it wasn't as warm or charming as it had been. There was no surprise in his eyes.

"In that case, m'am, my dad and I will be back, with our paperwork filled out."

Ann's smile died a little and she could only nod stiffly. "Walk me out, Sammy?"

He led his brother to the door--trying not to notice that Dean had a slight limp that had _definitely _not been there before--and they stopped in the doorway. "You know how this is going to go, don't ya?"

Sam looked up at his brother and nodded. The joy, the elation of knowing who he was and remembering and having his brother there, had faded a little with the realization of what had to happen. "Yeah. I know."

Dean's hand fell on his shoulder and he smiled. "I'll see you later, Sam."

"See you later, Dean." His brother didn't move for the door, but instead pulled him into another hug.

"You have no idea how glad I am we found you."

He clutched his brother and traced the cracked leather of the jacket. "I know." He whispered. "_Believe _me, I know."

* * *

He made the walk back to the living room with his head high. It was strange, to view the world and the people in it through the eyes of Sam Winchester again. Alex could have been anyone, could have done anything. But Sam…Sam was who he was and nothing could change that.

He found everyone still in the living room. For a moment, when he walked in, they all stared at him.

Cooper was the first to break the silence. Lizzie had long since abandoned his lap, so he rose, shaking out his limbs, walking towards the door. He stopped in front of Alex—_Sam_—and looked down, with his green eyes. Green eyes, just like Dean's, which is why they were so familiar. "That was your brother?"

"Yeah." He said, grinning up.

Cooper nodded. "Seems pretty cool. What does he listen to?"

He gave a short laugh. "Zeppelin. Metallica. Stuff like that."

Cooper smiled. "I approve." He lay a hand on Sam's shoulder, in the same spot that Dean's hand had been a few minutes before. It was the touch of an older brother, letting his younger brother know that he was there and always would be.

He grinned. "I'm glad that you do."

The hand dropped from his shoulder and Cooper left the room. One by one, they all trailed out, until he was alone.

He knelt and picked up a discarded _Go Fish _card. He ran his fingers over it, feeling like an architect studying an object from another time of existence.

He looked at the card, ran his fingers across the surface, smiled, and placed it gently on the table.

* * *

He found Ann sitting at the dining room table, a glass of water in front of her, staring into the air in front of her with a slightly glazed look in her eyes.

"Ann?" She jumped a little and turned to look at him.

"Oh, hello Alex—," abruptly her face fell. "Or is it Sam?"

"Either." He said.

"Is there something you needed?"

"I know what you were thinking when I told you he was my brother." Ann tilted her head and looked at him. "I know that they told you they suspected child abuse." Her face hardened and her hand tightened around her glass of water. He tapped his forehead with his finger. "But I have my memories back, Ann, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that neither my brother nor my dad have ever lifted a finger against me." It wasn't _entirely _true. His Dad had never lifted a finger against him, but he and Dean _were _brothers, and no brothers went without a few squabbles that ended in black eyes. But they had never hurt him on purpose, and they never would. "And they would die before they let anything hurt me."

Ann smiled at him, but the smile didn't reach her eyes. "I know how you might _feel_, Alex, but there _is _paperwork to be filled out, and there will probably be an investigation." She patted his arm. "You might have to wait a while, honey."

He smiled back at her, and the smile didn't quite reach his eyes either.

There would be no investigation, and he knew it.

* * *

He pressed his lips to Lizzie's forehead as he tucked her in. "Goodnight Lizzie. I love you."

"G'night Alex." She said, around a yawn, as she sank down into her pile of blankets and frills. He smiled and turned, then gulped.

Lydia stood in the doorway—it was _her _room too and he had somehow forgotten—and her eyes told him everything. "You're not going to be here in the morning."

He threw a look over his shoulder, at Lizzie, and looked back to her. He crossed the room, grabbed her arm, and pulled her into the bathroom, shutting and locking the door behind him. They faced each other.

"You're not going to be here in the morning, are you Alex?"

He looked at her. He could lie. Sam Winchester would have lied, but Sam Winchester also wouldn't have gotten so close.

"No, I'm not." Alex Carson could lie too, but not to her.

She sagged, visibly, as if the world was on her shoulders. "I'm never going to see you again, am I?"

"Don't say that, Lydia." His throat closed. He started to reach for her hand and then stopped. "We'll see each other again." Her eyes called him a liar. "I promise. And I'll write."

"Why can't you stay?" She reached for him, grabbed his hand.

He shook his head, squeezing her hand at the same time. "I know who I am, Lyd, and I don't belong here."

"We're not good enough for you?"

He rolled his eyes. "Shut up, Lydia. You know that's not it. I just…I can't remember and know about Dean and my Dad and remember _everything _and be able to stay here. Too much has happened to me; too much for me to belong here."

"I don't understand what you mean, Alex."

He smiled. "I know. And I can't explain."

She held his hand tighter. "I can't believe you'll be gone by morning." He looked into her eyes, her dark, dark eyes that were bright with suppressed tears, and his heart raced.

"I'm sorry, Lyd."

He drew her into a hug and held her in his arms.

"Goodbye." She whispered, tilted her chin up towards him.

He could taste her tears on his lips when he drew away.

* * *

In the seven months that he had been rooming with Brandon, he had come to a certain understanding of how heavy a sleeper the other boy was. That was why he was reasonably sure that he could climb out the window without waking his roommate.

When he climbed down the ladder, moving with practiced silence, and found Brandon sitting up in bed, his eyes shining in the darkness, he was sure that he was caught.

"Weren't even going to say goodbye, were you?"

"I—I wasn't sure how you would take it."

Brandon shook his head. "I'm no snitch, Alex." He smiled faintly. "Besides, this isn't the first running away that I've been accomplice to."

He looked down. "Thanks, Brandon."

"Don't mention it." They stood in silence for a moment. "Take care of yourself, Alex."

"Stay out of trouble, Brandon."

* * *

He slid into the passenger seat of the Impala—the good old Impala, as shiny black as always, and blasting _Metallica_—and turned to his brother, scowling. "You were a _lot _of help."

Dean grinned at him. "I try."

"Honestly, you couldn't have even helped a little bit?"

"What did you want me to do? Hold out my arms and catch you? As if."

He hmphed and folded his arms, trying to hide his grin. The banter was perfect, the epitome of their relationship.

Dean started the engine and it _purred_, the way it always did. Sam closed his eyes and listened to the sound that had lulled him to sleep so many times, a sound as familiar as his heart-beat.

The world was falling back into place.

"Say goodbye, Sammy."

As the Impala pulled away from the curb, he looked out the window, at the house he had spent nearly a year of his life in. In his bedroom window he could see Brandon's figure, watching. In another window there was another familiar figure, and he could practically taste the tears on his lips again.

"Goodbye." He whispered.

Alex Carson faded as the house disappeared in the rearview mirror, and Sam Winchester slipped back into his place in the world.

Dean Winchester grinned at his little brother and pressed the accelerator.

The world settled, equilibrium restored.

Everything in that moment spoke of its absolute _rightness_.

Sam never wanted it to change.

* * *

A/N 2: Okay. Now, I have two very important questions to ask. First, by a show of hands (or reviews), how many people would like an epilogue. The epilogue is, currently, since its only half-written, a collection of moments after this fic, tying up loose ends and just showing how the world progressed after this. It will probably be up in a couple of days, if people want it.

Second question. Anyone interested in a sequel? ;) I have an idea for a sequel sitting in the back of my head. It would probably be set in the second or third season of the show and would definitely feature Lydia and maybe a few of the other kids. I don't know how quickly it would be written, since NaNoWriMo starts up in a couple of days, but I would try my best to get it up quickly.

And finally, thanks to everyone who followed this to its--tentative--conclusion!

See you around!


	6. Epilogue

A/N: Hello all! I decided, based partially on your response and partially on my own feelings, that _Disorientation _really needed an epilogue to complete it, so here it is! I had intended to get this out earlier, but life--and NaNoWriMo--caught up with me. I tried to tie up any loose ends, gave the requested Sam/John reunion, and just tried to showcase the impact that the situation had on their lives. It's a little bit fragmented, partly because it's supposed to just be random moments, and partly because most of it was written in my notebook during my Environmental Issues class (lol). So, here you go!

_Epilogue_

_Moments in Time_

_"_What do you _mean_, you didn't tell him?" He hissed.

Dean grimaced and placed a finger against his lips, in a silent _shush _motion. Sam glared and his brother sighed. "Do you remember how I told you he was sleeping?"

Sam nodded. "Yeah…." His eyes widened suddenly and he looked at his brother with an open mouth. "You _drugged _him?" He whisper-shouted. Green eyes narrowed at him.

"_Yes_." Dean hissed back. "Do you honestly think that he would sleep of his own free will? So yes, I slipped a couple of sleeping pills in his water."

"He's gonna kill you, Dean."

The older teenager gave him a triumphant grin. "Not when I show him who I brought home with me."

"I can't believe you're using me to get yourself out of trouble." He grumbled. Dean flashed him another grin and fit the motel key into the lock, turning the handle. He pushed the door open, to reveal one of a string of countless, unremarkable, seedy motel rooms. This one was no different than any other, but it felt different.

The television was on, the sound low, the picture fuzzy. One of the lights was on, and in the dim lighting Sam saw the figure sitting in the far chair.

His father's head lifted, and he could see, even from across the room, that there were lines on his face that had not been there before. "Dean—," John Winchester's voice abruptly cut off and he froze, staring across the room at his youngest son.

Sam stepped forwards, around his brother, and smiled a little. "Hey Dad."

"_Sammy_."

Before he could blink Sam found himself being pulled into a tight grip. Dean leaned against the wall, silent, smile on his face. The light hit John's eyes, lighting up the tears that collected there.

Sam held onto his father, laid his head on his chest, and smiled.

* * *

Sometimes Sam remembered the grip his father held him in on the night he came 'home'. He remembered the tears in his father's eyes, and the way that John just held him close to his heart.

But the world had irrevocably changed—_he _had changed, where Dean and his father had not—and now things were falling apart. He chafed at the _obey-or-die _commands his father issued, at the brusque, army-general tone of voice that his father used. He chafed at being squashed into the back-seat of a car for hours upon end, driving to destroy some faceless enemy. He thought longingly of school—ignoring how much he had first hated the steadiness—and practically _dreamed _of a house, of staying in one place. He couldn't shake from his mind the thought of a white house with four children and two parents and a world that he didn't, _couldn't _belong to.

It wasn't long before the tediousness of driving, of fighting, of washing blood off his hands and stitching up his own wounds, began to wear on him. John treated their life as a mission, intense and focused on a single goal: _revenge_. Dean treated it as an adventure; he thrived on fighting and destroying evil things, addicted to the rush of adrenaline and the long line of girls.

And Sam—or maybe it was the small part of himself that still went by the name of _Alex Carson_—just wanted to stop. He wanted his family, wanted to be with his father and his brother, but he wanted the world of _normality_ too.

Sometimes—and he didn't admit it, not even to himself, because it was so fundamentally _wrong_—he wished that Dean had never showed upon his doorstep, and that he had never remembered that his name was _Sam Winchester _rather than _Alex Carson. _

* * *

Sam Winchester was living in two worlds. One was the world of his current existence. The other was a world that he had resigned to memory. Yet he was living in the same scene, one foot in each world, struck by the differences.

"Got the shotgun?"

_"Got your backpack?" _Ann's voice said.

"Yes."

"Salt?"

_"Homework?" _

"Yeah.

"Matches?"

_"Lunch money?" _

"Yes."

"Brain?" Dean threw him a trademark smirk.

_"Brain?" Ann stood by the doorway, smile on her face. _

He jerked, the memory coursing through him.

"Dean, I've got it." He said, sharper than he intended. The smirk froze on his brother's face; Dean met his gaze and then looked away.

Things were different.

* * *

Things weren't right in the _Wright_ household.

Alex Carson wasn't the first foster-kid to enter the household and depart just as quickly. He wasn't even the first to take his leave in the middle of the night through a window. The household, the make-shift family, had always adjusted. First embracing the new person, bringing them into the fold, and readjusting once that person was gone, retreating to the way life had been before. But, for the first time ever, there was a gap. The hole left by Alex's departure didn't magically fill itself; the world didn't rebound to the way it had been before.

They missed him.

The days right after he left had been a whirlwind of cops and social workers, of people in suits asking questions. _What was the man's name again? And Alex, what did he say his name was? Did you notice what kind of car they were driving? And are you sure that he left of his own free will? Did Alex seem…afraid? Anxious, worried? _And the ultimate question, the one they all dreaded. _Did you know he was going to leave? Did he tell you? Did you have any idea? _

Of course they had known. Brandon had helped him out the window; Lydia had said her tearful goodbyes. Cooper had sat back and said goodbye in his quiet kind of way. Ann had picked up the signals subconsciously, had known on some level and prepared herself mentally for the sight of an empty bed. Even Drew had picked up on the signs. Only Lizzie had been blissfully ignorant, but had she been only a few years older she would have known just as much as the rest of them. They had all known, and they all vehemently denied that knowledge when questioned by the authorities.

Eventually the whirlwind of questions died down, and Alex Carson was accepted as lost.

The world went on.

But Lydia moped around, hiding her tears, and Brandon went through a brief violent fit, picking fights with whoever he could. Lizzie wandered around the house, calling his name, asking when he was going to come back. Cooper retreated into his room, quiet and withdrawn. Ann sat at the dining table, eyes fixed unflinchingly on the wall, neither seeing nor crying.

Time trickled on, and foster-kids came and went.

But there was always a little hole in the family, a little place that Alex Carson would have slid right into. The other kids were temporary; Alex was—could have been—permanent. And things just weren't right without him.

* * *

"Sam." There was a quiet force in Dean's voice that made him look up. Dean stood in the doorway, an envelope in his hands. Sam's eyes locked on the envelope. "What the hell is this?"

He rose, his back straight, his muscles tense, and strode across the space between them, snatching the envelope out of his brother's hands. He cast a quick look at the envelope—_Lydia Santiago—_and glared at his brother. For a moment he was startled by the fact that their eyes were almost level.

"Going through my stuff, Dean?" He said in a tight voice.

"What. Is. This?" Dean ground out, waving a hand at the envelope.

"Stay the hell out of my stuff." He said, turning his back. He walked away and felt his brother right behind him.

"What are you going to do, Sam, be pen pals? Going to tell her how sorry you are about skipping out in the middle of the night? Going to tell her all about your hobbies, your 'extracurricular activities' while she prattles on about soccer or gymnastics or whatever the hell she does? Going to explain to her why your address always changes?" Dean leaned close. "What are you doing, Sammy?"

He jerked his chin up, met his brother's eyes. "It's Sam." Something flashed in Dean's eyes—he could have sworn, for a moment, that it was hurt, but decided that it was anger instead. "It's one letter, Dean." He was tempted to break the gaze, but stood firm. "I made a promise, and I intend to keep it."

Dean stared at him, closed his eyes, shook his head, and walked away.

* * *

In the back of his mind Dean pinpointed the event that had changed everything. The damn Black Dog case in California, followed by six months of _hell_.

He shuddered, just thinking about those six months.

He had woken up in a hospital bed, after being in a three-day coma. The realization that he had almost died—it had been _that _bad—had set in quickly, especially when he sat up and realized two more things. The first was that his father still hadn't woken up, and the doctors were worried about brain damage. _Brain Damage_. The second realization had come right after he wrapped his mind around the first. Sam—_Sammy_, the little brother he would die to protect—was _missing_. Completely vanished off the face of the earth.

And he had been confined to a hospital bed, unable to move, unable to walk, unable to even find out where the hell his brother was.

The rest of that week, until the moment when his father woke up, was like living in a nightmare. The following three months—three months of tests, checkups, doctors, nurses, physical therapy, psychologists and psychiatrists, meds, hospitals, and above all, not knowing a damn thing about his brother—were some of the worst of his life. And when they were _finally _released they faced the three month task of _finding _Sam. Of tracking down where he was taken, talking to people, finding out that he didn't remember a damn thing about them—that was the part that really hurt the most. That Sam didn't remember them at all, that he'd completely lost his identity as Sam Winchester and become some stranger named _Alex_, while they were sitting there in absolute agony, thinking about him every moment—and infiltrating the foster care system, cutting through the red tape, hunting down the elusive, vital information.

Those six months, he firmly believed, where the worst months of his life. Worse even than the months right after his mother's death. Because Sam was alive, alive and safe and without a clue of who they were, while they were half-dead, half-crazy, out of their minds, and unable to find him.

After they'd found him, everything had been different. Sam had changed. Not necessarily in bad ways, but sometimes there was longing in his eyes, and he was distant. His heart wasn't in hunting anymore. His heart wasn't with them anymore. They'd lost a part of him, and it had changed everything.

Dean tried to block the sound of yelling out.

He wanted his little brother back.

* * *

He held the envelope—the envelope that contained his _future_, it was right in his hands and he could feel it, like a living, breathing force—in his hands. It was heavy and thick, too thick to contain rejection. He already knew what it was, but he couldn't bring himself to open it. Not yet.

"What's in the envelope?"

He jumped, his head jerking up as his brother strolled through the door. He hastened to hide the envelope away. "Nothing."

Dean raised his eyebrows. "Really?" He reached over and snatched it.

"Dean!" He shouted, rising from his chair. Dean backed up a pace, holding out his arm to keep him away.

"Samuel Winchester, yada yada." He said, looking at the envelope. His gaze fell on the corner and he stopped. He looked up, and Sam froze. "Stanford." Dean stared at him. "Stanford?"

"Give it back, Dean." He said, in a low voice. Dean handed it over, still staring.

"Sammy, what is that?"

"_Sam_." He corrected, not answering the other question.

"Fine, _Sam_. What is that?"

"Haven't opened it yet." He said. Green eyes narrowed dangerously.

_"Sam." _

"My acceptance letter."

"To Stanford."

He nodded, not looking at his brother.

Dean sat down. "Sam, what the hell are you doing?"

Sam met his gaze and it was Dean's turn to look away. He put his head in hands and tried to understand how violently his world had changed in the span of a few minutes. He tried to pretend that he hadn't seen it coming, ever since those six months in the "real" world.

They sat in silence for a long few minutes, before Dean lifted his head. "Why Stanford?"

Sam looked away.

_"Hey Alex, where do you want to go to college?" _

_He looked aside at Lydia and shrugged. "Dunno. I haven't thought about it recently." He left unsaid that fact that he couldn't remember anything before recently. "Why? Do you know where you want to go?" _

_She looked at him, with stars in her eyes, seeing the future. _

_"Stanford. I want to go Stanford." _

Dean watched him, saw the look in his eyes, and understood. He stood, without saying a word, and for the second time in his life he walked away from a Sam who gripped an envelope as though it were his life.

* * *

John Winchester's eyes were dangerous. Looking into them right now was like watching the clock on a nuclear bomb slowly ticking down, ready to explode and destroy everything.

Sam's eyes were deadly calm. Like the eye of a hurricane, deceptively calm and quiet, just waiting for the right moment to tear everything apart.

Dean didn't want to be there. He didn't want to hear his father rant and rave, didn't want to see Sam's patience wear thin, didn't want to watch them scream at each other, equally destructive forces battling for domination. He wanted to be anywhere else, wanted to be at a bar, flirting with cute waitress, winning money in a game of pool. But if he left he very well might come back to nothing at all.

"Absolutely not." John said, his voice loud and angry and determined. It was an order, a command, a statement that was absolutely steadfast and would not change. "You are _not _going."

Sam's chin jerked up and his body was tense. Dean might jump to obey their father's orders, but _he _would not. "Yes, I am." He stared into his father's eyes, unafraid. "I'm going."

John's face went red and his fists clenched.

"Well then." He said, in a dark voice. "If you're gonna go you'd better stay gone. If you turn your back on this family, you don't come back."

Dean stepped forward, his mouth dropping open. Things had just gone too far.

It was too late. Sam's eyes flashed. "Fine." He spat. "Then I'm gone."

He stormed out of the motel, door slamming behind him.

John stormed into the bathroom and slammed the door closed.

Dean stood in the empty room, ears echoing with the sound of slamming doors, the sound of his family breaking apart. As he stood there he was sent reeling back to another time when it had been just him and his dad, to another time when Sam had been gone. They had lost him once.

And now they had driven him away.

_Maybe we should have left him_, his mind whispered, the poisonous thoughts unable to be contained. _He would have been happier. He would have been normal._

_And what about me and Dad? We couldn't live without him, _he argued against that little voice.

_What about now? Are you going to drag him back, force him back? Are you going to make him miserable again?_

He violently blocked out the little voice, collapsing on his bed.

But his answer drifted to the forefront of his consciousness anyway.

_No._

_I'm going to let him go._

* * *

She had forgotten. She held the letter, with its well-worn creases, in her hands. It was a letter she had read hundreds of times, and yet, forgotten.

_Dear Lydia,_

_I had a million things that I wanted to say to you, but sitting here, I can't remember any of them. How are you? How is everyone else? Not that you can write me back anyway…._

_I can't tell you where I am. Not because I don't trust you, but because it could…complicate things. Let's go with that. And I'm not entirely sure. I slept through most of the ride here. I couldn't tell you what state I'm in for the life of me._

_I hope that you and everyone else are okay. I wish…I wish that I could talk to you instead of sending you a letter. (Not that there's anything wrong with letters, but it's not the same, is it?) I'm doing fine; Dean and Dad are glad to have me back, and I can't tell you how great it is to be able to remember who I am. _

_I guess you might be wondering what this pointless letter is about? I wanted…there are a couple of things I didn't get to say, and I was wondering if you could help? Could you tell Ann that I'm sorry? Tell her that I'm sorry for the way things turned out, and that she is an awesome mom. Can you say the same thing to Drew? I'm sorry and that he's an awesome dad. And could you tell Cooper thanks for everything?_

_You know, if you were sitting next to me you would tell me to just get to the point. I really would like you to say those things, but what I really want to say is thank you. To you. You are the best friend I've ever had, Lyd, and I'm sorry that I had to leave. I promised that I would see you again, and I keep my promises. I'll promise again, Lydia. I __**will **__see you again. _

_I don't really have anything else to say, so…goodbye._

_Love,_

_Alex_

_(Sam)_

"Lydia, are you ready yet?"

She looked up from the letter. She folded it and tucked it into the back of a photo album, then put the photo album into a cardboard box, closing the flaps and sealing it with tape. She stood. "Yeah, Ann. I'm ready."

"What was that?" Her foster-mother asked.

She smiled, shaking her head. "Just a memory."

* * *

A/N 2: And...that's it! Thanks to all of my awesome reviewers (and lurkers) for sticking around until the end! I hope you've enjoyed the trip!

On another note...keep an eye out for the sequel! It's tenatively titled _The Stars Align_ and is set third season. It should involve an actual supernatural plot, Sam and Dean goodness, Lydia, Lizzie, and maybe a guest appearence by Brandon and/or Cooper! It probably won't be out until the end of the month/beginning of December (because NaNoWriMo is kicking my ass right now) but it will be out!

See you around!


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